[ant6n]

The East Side Access is also a project that would never be built in Europe. What they should've done is built a through-tunnel through Manhattan connecting Long Island Railroad and New Jersey Transit, with two or three smaller stations across midtown.

Basically, instead of ESA and (ultimately cancelled) Gateway projects, calling for new tunnels connecting to giant carvern terminuses in the city, u connect these projects into one long tunnel without terminuses.

A terminus requires a lot of platforms and tracks because trains need to get completely emptied and turned around. If you stop at multiple stops and terminate at the other end of the city, you can do that a that a place where's plenty of space (or multiple different points). You also spread the passenger loads across multiple stations, meaning less passenger flow per station, less dwell time for trains (=higher frequency), and people will be closer to where they need to go (i.e. you can connect to all subway lines in Manhattan).